‘So you’ve been down there?’ said Philip.  ’Tell us of your welcome.  Never mind why you went:  I think I see.  You’re the Patrick of fourteen, who tramped across Connaught for young Dermot to have a sight of you before he died, poor lad.  How did Mr. Adister receive you?’

Patrick described the first interview.

Philip mused over it.  ’Yes, those are some of his ideas:  gentlemen are to excel in the knightly exercises.  He used to fence excellently, and he was a good horseman.  The Jesuit seminary would have been hard for him to swallow once.  The house is a fine old house:  lonely, I suppose.’

Patrick spoke of Caroline Adister and pursued his narrative.  Philip was lost in thought.  At the conclusion, relating to South America, he raised his head and said:  ’Not so foolish as it struck you, Patrick.  You and I might do that,—­without the design upon the original owner of the soil!  Irishmen are better out of Europe, unless they enter one of the Continental services.’

‘What is it Con O’Donnell proposes to you?’ Patrick asked him earnestly.

’To be a speaking trumpet in Parliament.  And to put it first among the objections, I haven’t an independence; not above two hundred a year.’

‘I’ll make it a thousand,’ said Patrick, ‘that is, if my people can pay.’

’Secondly, I don’t want to give up my profession.  Thirdly, fourthly, fifthly, once there, I should be boiling with the rest.  I never could go half way.  This idea of a commencement gives me a view of the finish.  Would you care to try it?’

’If I’m no wiser after two or three years of the world I mean to make a better acquaintance with,’ Patrick replied.  ’Over there at home one catches the fever, you know.  They have my feelings, and part of my judgement, and whether that’s the weaker part I can’t at present decide.  My taste is for quiet farming and breeding.’

‘Friendship, as far as possible; union, if the terms are fair,’ said Philip.  ’It’s only the name of union now; supposing it a concession that is asked of them; say, sacrifice; it might be made for the sake of what our people would do to strengthen the nation.  But they won’t try to understand our people.  Their laws, and their rules, their systems are forced on a race of an opposite temper, who would get on well enough, and thrive, if they were properly consulted.  Ireland ’s the sore place of England, and I’m sorry for it.  We ought to be a solid square, with Europe in this pickle.  So I say, sitting here.  What should I be saying in Parliament?’

‘Is Con at all likely, do you think, Philip?’

’He might:  and become the burlesque Irishman of the House.  There must be one, and the lot would be safe to fall on him.’

‘Isn’t he serious about it?’

’Quite, I fancy; and that will be the fun.  A serious fellow talking nonsense with lively illustrations, is just the man for House of Commons clown.  Your humorous rogue is not half so taking.  Con would be the porpoise in a fish tank there, inscrutably busy on his errand and watched for his tumblings.  Better I than he; and I should make a worse of it—­at least for myself.’